The Mirror's Truth: A Novel of Manifest Delusions

by Michael R. Fletcher

  “I never—”

  “You never dared,” said Stehlen, glaring hate and longing at the girl. “Coward.” She hawked snot and Bedeckt saw the Kleptic fought tears. “I loved you and you abandoned me. You never once said—” she choked to silence.

  Bedeckt remembered that night in Neidrig, hallucinated that drunken scene for all to witness. They watched Bedeckt and Stehlen rut in a filthy alley. They heard Stehlen whispering, ‘I love you,’ over and over into his ruined ear as she straddled him, grinding herself to a screaming orgasm.

  All watched except Stehlen. She pulled her legs in tight, hugged them against her chest and cried great tearing sobs, unashamed and uncaring. Bedeckt’s heart broke and tears ran from eyes that had seen too much pain to ever cry again.

  “I’m sorry,” said Bedeckt.

  Stehlen sobbed, forehead pressed against her legs.

  “I am the Greatest Swordsman in the World,” said Wichtig.

  “Why her?” asked Zukunft from within her blanket, watching Stehlen. “What’s wrong with me? Why won’t you touch me?”

  “I can’t,” said Bedeckt, looking for the words, wanting to go to Stehlen and hold her and knowing if he did she’d stick a knife in his guts. She’s not here. This isn’t real. You’d be comforting a hallucination. But it felt all too real and not going to her burned like cowardice.

  Cowardice isn’t on the list.

  “Touch me,” said Zukunft. “Show me I’m worth something. Show me I’m desirable. Show me you aren’t disgusted by me. Show me my crimes are forgivable.”

  “I can’t.” This isn’t real. This isn’t real. She’s not here. I’m dreaming. “I’m sane.”

  “And I’m insane,” said Zukunft. “I disgust you.” She shrugged within her blanket. “I killed my baby sister. I deserve your loathing. My Afterdeath will be a hell of punishment.”

  Bedeckt reeled, drowning in himself. Stehlen’s quiet sobbing tore at his heart and Wichtig mumbled to himself about mountains and old men and killing gods.

  “You’re insane,” Bedeckt agreed, before realizing how that might sound. “Your sister is a manifestation of your guilt.”

  “No, she’s real. She’s trapped in the mirror and it’s my fault.” Zukunft’s eyes glinted from the folds of her blanket. “She showed me you dying. Your friends are going to die too. You don’t stop Morgen. You don’t undo whatever damage you did.”

  Is that true? Was all this for nothing? “She’s a Reflection,” said Bedeckt. “The mirror ever lies.”

  “You keep saying that,” said Zukunft, “but you’re not a Mirrorist. You don’t know.”

  They sat in silence, the crackle pop of the fire the only noise. Stehlen and Wichtig were gone.

  Just the hallucinations of a feverish mind. I’m sane. I’m still sane. Once he was better, once the fever broke, he’d be himself again.

  “I was awake,” said Zukunft. “When she was talking to you. I heard it all.”

  “She?” Bedeckt blinked at the girl, confused. Did she mean one of his hallucinations?

  “My sister. She told you that you can save yourself.” She nodded at the mirror, once again reflecting only fire. “She told me you still can. If you abandon me, ride hard—”

  “Never trust a Reflection,” said Bedeckt. “She wants you to lose hope. She wants you to surrender. When she’s broken you, she’ll drag you into the mirror. You’ll be trapped there and she’ll be free. That’s all she wants. Everything else is a distraction.”

  Zukunft shied, huddling deeper into her blanket, but didn’t look away. “And you? What do you want, if not me?”

  I do want you. I want you more than anything. Bedeckt stared at the ground between them, unwilling to meet her eyes. She’s a child. It’s on the list and I will not abandon my list.

  He remembered her in that tavern, soaked to the skin, leaning over him, her hair shutting away all the shite of the world until there was only them. He remembered the softness of her lips and the desire to return the kiss. He remembered how small and frail she seemed and yet how strong. Here he was, a scarred murderer, and she did not fear him. He hallucinated the scene over and over and Zukunft watched in silence.

  She blinked, spilling fresh tears. “That’s the pretty shell,” she said. “Not the rot within.” Her visage changed, darkened like the sudden onset of a storm. She bared teeth at him like a rabid dog. “All the men I’ve used, bent to my purpose and thrown away. They were nothing. Wretches, led about by their damned cocks. You’re no different. I’ve watched your foul hallucinations. I saw you with that woman. She loved you and you abandoned her.” She bent forward, collecting her mirror to shove it back into its bag. “I expect no better.”

  Good. Then maybe she wouldn’t be disappointed.

  The fire flickered and jumped and endless war raged around them, men stumbling and screaming and falling to the earth with horrendous wounds. Cities burned and women were raped and murdered, children smashed against stone walls until they hung limp and lifeless. Bedeckt remembered every scene. Not once did he step forward to intervene.

  “Wasn’t on my list.”

  Men protecting far better rulers than the petty Gefahrgeist tyrants who paid Bedeckt in easy gold, fell before his axe. He walked over them like they were nothing. Eyes ahead, always seeking the next score. A dozen fortunes were made and squandered on whores and drink. Though he often contemplated leaving this life of violence and crime, he never did. Never even tried. He organized each failure with meticulous planning.

  He saw Stehlen and Wichtig in an abandoned farmhouse, fighting. Outside lurked the Geborene Geisteskranken, ever tightening the noose, their delusions raping reality. The earth twisted in revulsion, rose up to swallow the hated creatures defiling its surface. Thousands of men and women, marching in loose formation, fell writhing as the dark thoughts lurking in the hearts of all people manifest as demons and clawed their way free. High above, hidden in the clouds, flew something malevolent and evil. It would burn them, melt their bones. His friends would die and there was nothing he could do.

  “I can save them,” said Bedeckt.

  “They aren’t on your damned list,” said Zukunft. “I’m not on your damned list. I’m using you and I’ll throw you away.”

  I don’t care. But he did.

  Bedeckt thought back to his conversation with Vergangene, when she climbed from the mirror. Had guilt truly driven his decisions? He remembered kidnapping Morgen, the Geborene godling, and how he planned to kill the boy if need be. And yet somehow he ended up doing everything in his power to keep the lad alive. He told himself it was all for selfish purposes, but somehow that rang false. You killed Stehlen to protect the boy. He remembered lying burnt by the Hassebrand’s fire and choked on the stench of his charred flesh. He remembered wondering at adding something to his list so late in life. And here he was trying to undo the damage he’d done the boy instead of using the godling like he should have from the beginning. All because…

  The damned list is a prison.

  Let Vergangene have Zukunft. What was the death of a deranged Mirrorist to him?

  Morgen could have his way with the world. How was this Bedeckt’s responsibility? Let the little bastard make everything clean and perfect.

  To hells with Stehlen and Wichtig. They followed him until following got them both dead. The bastards chased him from the Afterdeath. They probably meant to kill him, to send him screaming back to that grey hell. But they were still following. Their deaths would be his fault.

  Fault. Guilt. All the deepest horse shite.

  Wichtig and Stehlen danced to Morgen’s plans, never seeing the bigger picture. They were fools.

  “You’re the fool,” Stehlen whispered into his ear, “if you believe that.” She kissed his neck, lips soft and warm in a way Stehlen never was. Except in that puke-spattered alley.

  “Your love is an anchor,” Bedeckt told her. “Wichtig is right: Emotion is manipulation.”

  “Even I don’t believe that,�
� said Wichtig in the other ear. “Emotion is a strength I never dared.”

  Fools, he thought without rancour.

  The Geborene Geisteskranken could have them both.

  The world rolled like it were mounted on horseback and Bedeckt saw Wichtig riding alongside him. Morgen sat before the Swordsman as he had when they left Neidrig back before they were all killed. The boy-god watched Bedeckt with wide, innocent eyes.

  “Your eyes are a lie,” said Bedeckt.

  “They weren’t,” said Morgen.

  Bedeckt grunted. True enough.

  “You couldn’t leave me to the Slaver,” said Morgen. “What makes you think you can turn your back on your friends?”

  “I never did like you,” Bedeckt told the boy.

  Morgen laughed and was gone.

  Bedeckt, mounted on Arsehole, clung to the pommel like a drowning man clinging to driftwood. The world went mad and tried to drag him along with it.

  “I am sane,” he told the world, ignoring the hallucinations cavorting about him in mad parody of distant memories.

  Zukunft rode beside Bedeckt, her face pale with worry.

  “How many of those whores did you fall in love with?” someone asked.

  “All of them,” answered Bedeckt, not sure if he lied.

  The ground smashed the air from Bedeckt, lit his world in sparks and fire. Arsehole looked down at him with disgust.

  “You keep falling off your horse,” the damned horse said.

  Black.

  Zukunft knelt at his side, pounding on his chest like she meant to beat him into the mud beneath. She screamed and cried and wailed and he couldn’t understand any of it.

  “Quiet, girl,” he said. “Let me rest.”

  She slapped him hard and he tasted blood. “Get up, you old shite,” she yelled in his face, spittle flying. “Get the hells up and get on your gods-damned horse.” She punched his chest again, punctuating her words. “I can’t keep pushing your fat old arse into the damned saddle. Get the hells off the ground.”

  “Stop screaming and let me rest.”

  She slapped him again, snapping his head to one side. He blinked sharp tears. She was stronger than she looked.

  “I knew you were going to abandon me,” she screamed, her perfect nose almost touching his flattened one. “I knew you were a liar, like the rest.” Zukunft collapsed on top of Bedeckt like a puppet with slashed strings. She punched him over and over and he let her. “Just another selfish bastard.”

  Bedeckt hallucinated the decrepit Wahnvor Stellung church his father used to drag them to on days of worship. Hells of punishment and pain flickered around them, threatened to close in and steal Zukunft away.

  “I’m sane,” Bedeckt said into Zukunft’s hair.

  Old friends and betrayed comrades gathered to witness his fall, the utter failure of everything he was and believed.

  “I’m sane, my beliefs don’t matter,” Bedeckt told them.

  People he couldn’t even remember killing looked doubtful, nodded in recrimination at the world torn by his hallucinations. A different Afterdeath awaited this time. Somehow he knew it.

  He knew it.

  “My beliefs don’t—”

  “Your mind is sick,” said Stehlen. “You will define your own hell. We all do.”

  “No, I’m sane.”

  But sanity wasn’t real. It was a myth, a delusion. In a mad world, in a reality governed by faith and belief and delusion, what was sanity?

  It’s madness.

  Bedeckt drowned in madness and oceans of the blood he’d spilled.

  “If you die now,” said Stehlen, her narrow face pinched with concern, “you’ll be trapped for all eternity in this fever dream.”

  Bedeckt reached his half-hand out to hold Zukunft and saw she’d bandaged it.

  Going to have to stop thinking of it as my half hand.

  He held her close, stroking her hair until she calmed and stopped hitting him.

  “I can’t mount my horse with you lying atop me,” he said. “We need to get moving.”

  She pulled back, examining him through tearful green eyes. “You have a plan?” she asked.

  Bedeckt laughed, trying to ignore the madness of the sound. “No.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Natural philosophers have argued the shape of the world for a thousand generations. Some say it’s round, while others claim it’s flat. Vorstellung, that pompous windbag, says that if you walk west and cross the Basamortuan Desert, you will eventually find yourself on the far side of the Gezackt Mountains, and that if you cross them you’ll once return to the city-states. He’s a fool. The Basamortuan goes on forever; everyone knows this. Enter the desert and all you’ll find is death.

  —Geschichts Verdreher - Historian/Philosopher

  Something bothered Stehlen, niggled at her like a loose tooth or Bedeckt worrying over one of his stupid plans. What it was, however, escaped her. Something to do with Wichtig?

  Though Lebendig started the morning looking somewhat improved, a day in the saddle hadn’t done her any favours. Last time the Kleptic stole a glance, the Swordswoman looked tired, sat slumped and quiet. Gone was her perfect posture.

  Stehlen rode, eyes forward, aware that Lebendig watched and had been watching for several miles.

  I’ll wait her out. No one has more patience than I.

  Lebendig could ask her damned question, or she could let it go. Stehlen wasn’t in the mood to play these games. If the Swordswoman wanted to talk about something, she could damned well bring it up herself. Why the hells did she feel the need to make Stehlen initiate every conversation?

  That’s not really true, you know.

  Didn’t matter. She was angry and when she was angry, the facts were irrelevant.

  Wichtig used to say that.

  “What?” demanded Stehlen without looking at her lover.

  “Why do we have Wichtig’s second sword?”

  The idiot’s sword still hung over Stehlen’s shoulder.

  “Going to sell it,” she said.

  “Could have sold it in Unbrauchbar,” said Lebendig.

  “Get a better price in the capital,” said Stehlen, staring straight ahead.

  “We already have plenty of coin.”

  Stehlen shrugged.

  “You aren’t keeping it so you can give it back to him?”

  “Hells no.” Stehlen spat road dust. “He has to know I beat him,” she said, and immediately regretted it.

  “Won’t killing him tell him all he needs to know?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure you want to kill him?”

  “Yes.”

  Really? Why are you carrying his damned sword then?

  She remembered the carving of Wichtig, wounded and scarred. He looked scared, like for the first time the idiot comprehended mortality. Why did it bother her to see Wichtig hurt? She’d taken great pleasure in hurting him over the years. How many times had she stolen from him and then rubbed the theft in his face, mocking his inability to catch her?

  Why did I steal from him if not to hurt him?

  And yet, even though he was a manipulative shite, she felt strangely protective of the idiot. The Swordsman was too damned stupid to take care of himself.

  Stehlen sat straight, scowling in confusion.

  “What’s wrong?” Lebendig asked.

  “Nothing.”

  I don’t know where Wichtig is. She realized that ever since leaving the Afterdeath, she always knew where the Swordsman was. She always knew she could catch him in less than a day if she wanted to. Now, he was gone. She couldn’t sense him at all.

  Is he dead? The thought twisted her gut and she spat again, tasting sour bile. No, he couldn’t be.

  The carvings. You hid them in Lebendig’s pack. You no longer have them. Was that it, did the carvings somehow keep her in contact with Wichtig and Bedeckt?

  Take them back.

  No, she couldn’t. She put them in Lebendig’s pack
and anything in the Swordswoman’s gear belonged to the Swordswoman. Stehlen wouldn’t steal from her lover. She swore to herself she never would and of all the oaths sworn over the years, this was the only one she kept. She wouldn’t break it now, no matter how much she wanted those carvings. The only way to get them was to ask.

  Stehlen hesitated, remembering how she wanted to cut the ugly from her carving. She knew it would end badly. She would cut and carve until nothing remained.

  They’re safer with her than with me.

  Stehlen and Lebendig rode on in silence, the sky above darkening long before sunset as clouds thickened like congealing blood. The air felt heavy, oppressive and ripe with the violence of a building storm.

  “Cold tonight,” said Lebendig, shivering.

  Stehlen grunted.

  “Two days to the capital.”

  Grunt.

  “Big storm.”

  Grunt.

  “Lots of abandoned farms.”

  Grunt.

  “Let’s find one with a bit of roof before it starts raining.

  Grunt.

  Lighting forked and flickered overhead. A deafening crash of thunder heralded the unleashing of an icy torrent. In moments both women were soaked and shivering.

  “Let’s find a farmhouse,” said Stehlen.

  Lebendig grunted.

  Stehlen’s horse whinnied in nervous fear, lifting its hooves as if it didn’t like what it walked upon. Glancing down, she saw a young woman’s face staring at her from the mud. It looked to have been torn off the skull. She realized what she thought were the branches of stunted trees—as if Gottlos had any other kind—were actually limbs protruding from the churned muck.

  “Lebendig,” said Stehlen.

  Grunt.

  “Stop.”

  Lebendig stopped, shooting her an annoyed look. “Now you want to talk, out here in the damned rain? Let’s—”

  “Corpses.”

  Lebendig scowled at Stehlen and took in their surroundings, squinting into the dark. “They look like the mud pushed them out. Is this some kind of burial ground?”

  “Too fresh.”

  “We should leave.”

  Wichtig must have ridden through this. If he turned back he would run into Stehlen and Lebendig. How far away was the Swordsman? Last she checked—before she hid the statues in Lebendig’s pack—he was half a day ahead. Gods she wanted those statues.